The unnamed student said, “In this school [student kissing] is everywhere. If that were the case—suspending everyone for that—half the school would be suspended.” His parents say that if he doesn’t get reinstated onto the cheerleading squad, they’ll pursue further action.

We wonder if the school’s action outed him to the wider student body or town community. Alice has a population of around 19,104 people and the school has 1,364 students—not a small school by any stretch. The cheerleader obviously doesn’t want to make this a big issue and yet the school seems determined to do just that.

Feel free to reach out to Principal Lucy Munoz at 361-664-0126 or District Superintendent Salvador Cavazos at drscavazos@aliceisd.net to request that the cheerleader be reinstated and that the school stop arbitrarily punishing LGBT kids for PDA.

@Zen: It happens, occasionally. It even makes sense for straight guys to take up activities that put them in close contact with pretty girls.

I seem to remember one or the other of the Presidents Bush was a cheerleader.

Oct 14, 2011 at 4:47 pm · @Reply ·

Ted B. (Charging Rhino)

I’m impressed that in Alice, Texas that a male cheerleader had someone to kiss in High School …and that he felt secure enough to kiss the lucky boy on-campus, apparently out in broad daylight and not under the football stands at midnight.

Oct 14, 2011 at 4:52 pm · @Reply ·

Andy

This is horrible…Queerty, please follow up on this and give updates. I’m actually truly thinking about calling this principal and letting her know how lucky she is that the parents of this child support him as an out gay teenager. Otherwise, it could’ve been another really bad suicide-related situation. THanks for the story.

Oct 14, 2011 at 5:32 pm · @Reply ·

Kev C

I’m not requesting shit. I’m advising the cheerleader to contact the closest ACLU chapter and get a thing going.

I was concerned when I read that a young man was suspended from your cheerleading squad after a school camera caught him kissing another young man. It is unclear as to if this kiss is the reason he was suspended.

I am an HIV social worker in a very large university clinic. My personal concern here is that time and time again, I see young gay men who are taking risky behaviors with drugs, alcohol and sex because they are unhappy with who they are. They are usually unhappy with who they are because they are not accepted. They are not accepted by their parents, by their peers, by their authorities. Not being accepted leads to more depression, more anxiety, and more unwise choices, which leads to sad outcomes, including HIV and also suicide.

I am sure you are aware of the many, many instances in the U.S. of young gay kids committing suicide. One thing after another wears these kids down to the point where they no longer feel they can stand living in the world that treats them as if they are second-class citizens. Incidences such as being bullied make it hard enough on these young people. One place that they SHOULDN’T feel bullied and SHOULD feel supported is by the authorities at their school.

I am very concerned if what I have read is true, and that this boy was kicked off the team for showing the same kind of affection that every other kid his age is showing. You should know that adolescence is a time of developing independence and exploring life, including sexuality. Kissing is part of this developmental stage and should not be punished, and ESPECIALLY should not be punishable for one group of people (gay people) and not others (straight people).

I hope you reconsider this discriminatory decision.

Sincerely,

AJ, MSW
Clinical Social Worker

Oct 14, 2011 at 8:31 pm · @Reply ·

Cam

Siiiigh, can somebody in the legal department for the school district take care of this before the inevitable happens? They will get sued, they will lose, they will have to reinstate him and they will have to pay.

This idiot principal needs to be fired unless she has kicked out every cheerleader ever caught kissing a boy.

Oct 14, 2011 at 8:41 pm · @Reply ·

PopSnap

Am I the only one who is more creeped out than anything by this article? It just scares me to know that we live in a day and age where everything we do seems to be captured on camera… and that some people out there apparently sit around and go through hours of video footage? What?

Oct 14, 2011 at 9:43 pm · @Reply ·

Gay Veteran

@christopher di spirito: Only people who don’t know crap about Texas would make comments like that. Texas isn’t perfect but it damn sure doesn’t need to be associated with the Taliban. You troll!

Anyways, I hope his parents do sue and teach this school administration a lesson.

Oct 15, 2011 at 1:22 am · @Reply ·

AJ

Oh, so my email didn’t go through for “inappropriate language.” I’m not sure if it was the word “sex” or the word “gay,” but holy sh*t, THAT is inappropriate language!?!?

Oct 15, 2011 at 10:40 am · @Reply ·

Schlukitz

Done. Here is a copy of the email I just sent to Superintendent Cavaos:

Dear Superintendent Salvador Cavazos,

I just read of of your recent actions regarding a male cheer leader in your school.

If you are going to arbitrarily punish LGBT students for public acts of affection, then in all fairness, you should be doing the same for heterosexual displays of public affection.

Obviously, that is a weak (and non-sensible) argument and certainly one that no one in his right mind would/should be calling for.

It is also an equally a weak argument to protest public displays of affection by same sex members, be they straight or LGBT. It is totally wrong to to approve of behavior in one group of people, while condemning the same behavior among another group of people.

For that reason, I believe that the student in question should be reinstated and that your school policy be amended to cease punishing LGBT students for public displays of affection.

Sincerely,

Oct 15, 2011 at 4:12 pm · @Reply ·

Mike in Asheville

As disappointing as this story is, there certainly is a very shining silver lining: I simply cannot imagine sneaking a smooch with a boy when I was in high school. I have attend so many protests (was there for white night, AB 101, etc) and so many, way too many, funerals due to AIDS, and here is a generation where a boy DOES kiss a boy, in school no less. That, in of itself, makes me so happy.

Best wishes to this kid; kiss and kiss again, find love as many times as possible, or just with an ultimate one. ;)

Oct 15, 2011 at 8:15 pm · @Reply ·

macmantoo

@Gay Veteran: I’m sorry there was a misinterpertation by Christopher, its the leaders of Texas who promotes the Taliban religion. If you don’t believe me read what they say and support. It’s very similiar to the Talibans. And if the people of Texas elects these clowns then that would make them in effect members or supporters of the Taliban. Thank you.

Oct 16, 2011 at 2:57 pm · @Reply ·

Kyle

What I find particularly interesting in this case, is the fact that both the principle and the Superintendant both have Latino surnames. How fortunate that they were not the victims of bigotted discrimination as their families chose to seek better lives in the land of the free, and how sad that Principle Munoz is now the architect of discrimination in her own right.

I really do find it incomprehensible that such a decision could be countenanced, and I wonder if there is perhaps some past history of inappropriate behaviour with this student?

I too took note of the Latino surnames and made an observation very similar to your

Your speculation in the last paragraph of your comment might be well founded. I suspect, however that no one in that school who is willing to go up against the principal and the superintendent, for fear of losing their own jobs.

Oct 16, 2011 at 9:23 pm · @Reply ·

Schlukitz

For the past couple of days now, I have been receiving the following message each and every time I submit a comment on Queerty.

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@localhost and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at http://www.queerty.com Port 80

Interestingly, however,

the message does get posted, despite receiving this message immediately afterward. Is anyone else experiencing this as well?

“Captain Renault, I am under your authority. Is it your order that we come to your office?”

“Let us say that it is my request. That is a much more pleasant word.”

Or as Teddy Roosevelt said, “Talk softly, but carry a big stick.”

Oct 18, 2011 at 1:01 am · @Reply ·

B

There’s one thing wrong with this story – no mention about what happened to the other boy. Was he suspended? If not, why not? Did they have trouble identifying him from the video, with his boyfriend refusing to say who it was, or is something else going on (e.g., the media fixated on one of the two because he was a cheerleader). It’s even conceivable that iDavid nailed it in No 1 above – it was the quarterback but he was so valuable that they couldn’t afford to kick him out without losing every game that season, and having a winning season was far more important! Stranger things have happened.

Oct 18, 2011 at 2:57 am · @Reply ·

spiritedrandy

LOL at response to my email. What was the “inappropriate language used?” “Cheerleader” or “kissing?”

I understand you caught a male cheerleader kissing another boy via surveillance camera and kicked him off the cheerleading squad and suspended him. Unless you have done the same with any cheerleader who kissed a person of the opposite sex, I ask that you reconsider these actions and apologize to him. Doing so would teach by your actions how to be fair to all your students. Isn’t that what you expect of them?

Please let me know what you are going to do.

Thank you

Oct 18, 2011 at 2:31 pm · @Reply ·

B

No. 24 · spiritedrandy wrote, ‘LOL at response to my email. What was the “inappropriate language used?” “Cheerleader” or “kissing?”’

Most likely the filter objected to the word “sex” and classified your email as an advertisement for porn – they didn’t have an exception for the phrase “opposite sex”.

One “news” site had a policy of using “homosexual” instead of gay, and used some software to edit the articles it was copying from elsewhere. They ended up with an article about a runner named Tyson Gay and turned his name into “Tyson Homosexual”. It also changed phrase like “the 24(?) year old Gay” into “the 24 year old Homosexual”. They quickly became a laughing stock.